Hot Topic Reviews 

it's MAGA Mike here with a review of my recent visit to Hot Topic. I gotta tell ya, I was shocked and appalled by what I saw in there!

I took my granddaughter in for some new clothes, thinking it would be a fun and harmless shopping trip. But let me tell you, that store is chock-full of inappropriate and downright disturbing merchandise. The t-shirts had all kinds of vulgar language and inappropriate graphics, and don't even get me started on the "accessories". Who in their right mind thinks it's okay to sell that kind of stuff to kids?!

And the music they were blasting in there... I couldn't understand a word of it! It sounded like a bunch of cats being strangled! Whatever happened to good ol' fashioned rock and roll?

Overall, I wouldn't recommend Hot Topic to anyone, especially not anyone with kids or grandkids. It's just not a wholesome environment, and the merchandise is downright offensive. Save your money and shop somewhere else, folks. Trust me, you'll be glad you did.

I had ordered something at the end of December that was listed as a pre-order. Fast forward to today I see that my order is canceled but I’m still charged $4.30 for something on the order. Same thing happened with another order prior to this order and when I had called about it asking what the issue is they said it’s an issue with my bank that my card declined even though I always make sure I have enough money in my account prior to purchasing and have never had issues with anywhere else with my card. I was pretty much told that they couldn’t do anything about it. I love shopping at the hot topic in my mall, but this experience has not made me want to order anything online from Hot Topic ever again.

Purchased item which considered to be in stock as appeared in their website.
Only after completing the transaction they showed that this item is in pre-sale.
They refuse to cancel the order right now, the only way to cancel it is to send it back to them when it will arrive.
Never please never buy something from them, I am sorry for not reading the reviews before ordering!

I absolutely love hot topic they have everything you could possibly want. Everything from jewelry to horror products and funny stuff and of course goth and langeria items. I always walk out happy and the staff works hard and are very cool and hip non judgmental in the store.

I’ve been shopping at hot topic for a couple years now and every time I go to the pants area they never have plus size. I’ve only found pants that fit me once and it was the only plus size in the store. I think it’s unfair that they don’t have sizes for everyone and the only way you can get them is by buying them online, they should have them in store like everywhere else.

So frustrating. One of the worst online shopping experiences I’ve ever had. I can’t even shop at the one at my local mall because they’re closing down so they have barely anything stocked and it’s almost empty. Customer support is terrible. I tried to place an order twice and it kept saying error. Luckily I was using gift cards but it still took all of the balance and I never got refunded. I contacted customer support and they said they reloaded it back into the cards but I tried to buy the same things again using the same gift cards and it said I have no remaining balance. Seriously. It’s not worth it. They’re scamming people.

Was given an error message at checkout multiple times "We could not place your order. Please check your order information and try again.".
Checked my bank statement and was charged for every attempt for an order that didn't go through.
Would recommend shopping in-person.

The online ordering experience for hottopic is a mixed bag. Aside from frequent lags and glitches with the website itself, the layout is a bit dated and could be made more user friendly. It could also be organized better. The size guides could be better, there should be an option in your orders to review your items instead of searching for them, and they could do with larger sizes and more options for some of their apparel like the shoes. The shoes themselves need better quality inspection too, because I've ordered boots in the past that quite literally fell apart on humid, hot days in the summer because they were only held together by an adhesive of some kind, probably rubber cement or craft glue.
The shipping usually isn't an issue, albeit slow at times and some of the coupons barely save you any cash by the end total, but the products are usually pretty good in quality. I've personally shopped with this chain store for 15 years, mostly online, and I've only had one or two negative experiences with the customer support system. Usually, they're not too bad and helpful.
Overall, the online shopping experience isn't terrible, but not the best. However, if you read details, reviews, sizes, and understand it that it usually takes about 1 - 2 weeks for shipping and delivery, you'll be less inclined to have a bad experience.

Everything that was ordered online was late. Ordered for delivery to store thinking it would be faster and it was even worse! Did the chat thing online and that was total waste of time. Still haven't gotten my order. Was told it could be at the store sometime this week between Monday and Friday! Won't shop there again!

Got a tee shirt for Christmas. Was too small. Still had all tags attached. Went to store for exchange or store credit. Was told I needed to have ORIGINAL receipt even AFTER I told her it was a gift. Was told nothing they could do because I did not have an account with them.

They don't know what is in stock on the website, so you order and then they slowly cancel one item after another.

I placed an online order for 6 throw blankets. Hot Topic didn't ship it out until I contacted them on the day my items were to be delivered, the reason being that 3 out of 6 items were either back ordered or out of stock. I was not notified of this so I placed a replacement order for the remaining 3 blankets, only for them to just ship out 1 in the end because the other 2 became out of stock by the time it was supposed to be shipped out. If I had known that I'll be receiving just 1 out of 6 blankets, I would've canceled my entire order. They also don't ship these items to Canada so I had to ship it to a US address and then get again to its final destination, hence why their delay in notifying me of the unavailable items was a huge inconvenience. All in all, an awful experience.

Hot Topic should adjust its system to reflect accurate inventory and have better response times. Their customer service was not satisfactory so they should probably look into improving that as well.

Please don't buy anything online from this company! I pre-ordered a purse on September 8. I was told that I would receive this purse between October 18-28. Never received the purse. I called on October 25 to check status and was told that they had lots of inventory and they would ship my purse out by Monday 10-31. No purse showed on 10-31 but I called them and was told they had plenty of inventory and would have a supervisor call me to give me more answers. Received a call Tuesday from the supervisor and she informed me that they had no inventory and didn't know when they would get it back in stock this year!! When I asked for a refund she told me she couldn't for two weeks because it might be back in stock??!!! Not only this company never communicated with me about this issue but are giving me conflicting information of yes we have it in stock to less than a day later no we are out of stock. Now refusing to refund me for two weeks. What in the world!!! Please do yourself a favor and don't order online from this company.

Ordered a funko a month ago for presale, got a follow up email the next day saying it wasn't in stock for shipment and they had cancelled my order and refunded my money. Then, three days ago a random hot topic charge hit my bank and had no idea what it was. Only to do some snooping and find that it was the same order that got cancelled. No heads up that it was in stock, nothing. Out of the blue just taking my money without authorization of any kind. Sent them an email saying that I did not buy anything nor authorize a charge, and it was refunded a second time. Then this morning, find that I was charged for it a THIRD time! After all was all said and done the product did show up. Not to my knowledge of it still coming at all. However, it was in TERRIBLE condition. Rips and tears on every side of the box. This has happened with the last THREE of my orders. Word of advice, DO NOT ORDER FUNKOS ONLINE FROM THIS COMPANY!

Sales person RAVEN knew where everything i asked for was located. From the neon green belt to the green plaid skirt. Second time I’ve been there in a week, shopping for homecoming outfit for granddaughter, RAVEN even recognized me. HOT TOPIC will always be my first stop at the mall!

The customer service in-store is great! Hot topic at The Shoppe Carlsbad is the best store yet!

I pre-ordered a Moon Knight Funko pop from the show. It has been pretty hard to find and hot topic was the only place that “had it”. After pre ordering, I never received any email updates of ANY kind. Any status for my order I had to ask customer service! After 2 months of waiting, my order was cancelled Out of stock for awhile I was told. Waste of time. Never ordering here again.

1. They remove all negative reviews under the pretense of it "not following website guidelines"

2. Once you purchase items they may modify/change your order without asking you. Once they tell you they modified your order, they say that they can't cancel it. Even though they themselves have modified it... make it make sense. Anyway, a lot of their designs are created by independent artists I highly encourage buying directly from local artists.

Hot Topic does not value there Vips

I love hot topic, it's fine to shop in stores, however using my hard earned rewards has become a frustrating headache recently. The first time I used my rewards was fine but then the next order was canceled for no reason. ALL of my items were in stock, the site had like 70 percent off I used my rewards and shipped to store so I owed 0 dollars. The system doesn't apparently like that and canceled it. I contact there online messaging service they tell me it's an error and give me back my rewards, telling me if I order again they will honor the original sales prices and refund the price *no idea if we recieved the refund*
I finally got my items at least.
Then recently again I use my rewards my order that's all in stock is canceled. I call the number this time feeling furious. The first agent promises me they can recreate my order then we get disconnected, I call back and the second agent makes me rehash everything. Days later I see no new created order for my items and my rewards were returned to me. I'm feeling very angry and don't know if I'm going to attempt another reorder. Hot Topic fix your freaking system!

I ordered items to be picked-up at one of stores closest to me (still over an hour drive away round trip).

I never received an email for the order after placing it. I called customer service, they said to login to the portal instead.

I log into the portal and it shows I have no orders. I call cs again. They tell me this is a common known bug that many people experience.

About two weeks pass and I hear nothing about my order. I assume it has arrived at the store and I never got notified. I drive there during business hours but the door is locked and nobody seems to be there.

A couple days later I call the store. They say they have no idea if my order has arrived or not and have no way to tell me either way and that’s customer services job.

I call cs they say the store should tell me but that they’ll call the store. They call the store and tell me the store doesn’t know either way.

I call cs again the next day being like hey it’s been well over two weeks since I’ve placed my order and I’ve heard nothing about it. This means I’m considering the order MIA at this point. They said they can re-order my stuff to the store. I said no because I was going to be out of town for over three weeks. They said how about we ship it to your house via the mail. I said I wasn’t thrilled about that but one item out of the two I ordered, was selling out quickly so I agreed.

When I got back my items were at my house but I only had seven days to return them. Then the next morning I got notified multiple people on my plane had covid. I tested and was positive then rapidly became very sick in the next few hours. Due to CDC guidelines about when it’s safe to go out with having covid that meant I had only 1 day to return my item.

I show up to the store on that day to return the 1 of the 2 items. I get there almost two hours before hot topics website says they are supposed to close. The employee there tells me it’s been a long day and she is closing and already turned off her register. I tell her that it’s the last day to make my return. She said if I come back later it’s fine and she’ll honor it.

I message Hot Topic on Instagram to explain what happened and for a type of proof of what took place. It’s been three days at this point and I’ve messaged now with additional complaints and they have not responded.

The day after the store incident I call customer service.

For starters, the cs agents English wasn’t the strongest and it led to him not understanding what I meant a few times during the call, even when I’d try explaining it a couple times in different ways. He’d would become increasingly annoyed on his end and had an exasperated tone even though I feel the language barrier problems were from his end.

Anyway, I start the call saying what happened then I say I want to return it to a different store not the one above because they close at odd times and I waste time(1 hr 10 round trip) and gas money driving there. I say I want the agreement of an extended return at a different store honored and I want the money back on my credit card, not on a gift card.

At first the cs agent said there was nothing he could do it has been past the 30 days. Then I said so your employees have been dishonest with me. He said he’d go talk to his manager. He then said he’d do a return but I need to do the return form online and he’d send me an email about the return.

He then asks for my order number, I give it to him and he says no order shows up. He asks for the original order number, time passes. He asks for my email and then says he finally found the order.

After finding it he said I’d have to pay for shipping. I asked where online the return form was, he got flustered and due to a language barrier was unable to coherently describe where the form was. I told him I also thought it was unfair I had to pay after the hassle this has been. It turns out the shipping was to be reimbursed as well and that was also a language barrier misunderstanding.

I go to fill out the form online, there is a bug and the form won’t display. I try multiple devices, browsers, and even text a friend who tries it but there is nothing. I try again after an hour the form now displays but it is greyed out and says unable to do return.

It has also been 24 hrs since the call and I haven’t received an email from cs.

I messaged hot topic on Instagram everything that’s happened. Those messages are now between three days and 24 hrs old and I’ve never gotten a response.

The item I want to return is $29. $22 dollars were on my credit card, the rest was on a gift card I’d received for my birthday. I now have contested the $22 on my credit card which is my first time having to do so with a business. Even though this approach looses me $7 for an item I don’t want at all, I just want the process done with. I’ve wasted hours driving to hot topic and calling customer service multiple times. They seem to not have any desire to resolve this at all.